Finding Nora
by TheDaydreamerJM
Summary: Oneshot set in Finale. Nora wakes up to find herself safely away from the fire burning at Patch's underground apartments and sending all of the fallen angels to hell, including him. Someone got her out. The question is, who? And what do they want from her? Rated T for language and mature content.


_I scattered handfuls of feathers, praying I would know his on sight. Praying it hadn't already burned. I wouldn't let my thoughts turn to the worst. Ignoring the smoke that scratched at my eyes and lungs, I sifted the feathers with more urgency. I couldn't lose Patch. I wouldn't lose Patch. Not like this. Not on my watch._

 _My eyes watered, tears brimming over. I couldn't see clearly. The air was too hot to breathe. The skin on my face seemed to melt, and my scalp felt like it was on fire. I plunged my hands into the hill of feathers, desperate to find a solid black feather._

" _I'm not going to let you burn," Scott ground out above the crackling whoosh of flames. He rolled back on his knees, dragging me with him. I scratched ruthlessly at his hands. Not without Patch's feather._

 _The fire clamored in my ears, and my concentration was wilting without enough oxygen. I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, only to rub in more soot. I groped at the feathers, my arms feeling as though they were attached to hundred-pound weights. My vision seesawed. But I refused to pass out until I had Patch's feather._

" _Patch," I murmured, just as an ember landed on my shirtsleeve, igniting the fabric. Before I could raise a hand to tamp it out, the flame shot to my elbow. Heat torched my skin, so bright and agonizing, I screamed and pitched sideways. It was then that I saw my jeans were also ablaze._

 _Scott bellowed orders behind me. Something about leaving the chamber. He wanted to close the door and trap the fire inside._

 _I couldn't let him. I had to save Patch's feather._

 _I lost my sense of direction, stumbling forward blindly. Bright, licking flames eclipsed my vision._

 _Scott's voice, so urgent, dissolved into nothing._

The smell of burnt feathers and flesh stung my nose. I barely noticed.

I felt as though a forest fire had scorched my chest, consuming me from the inside out. Whether it was my lungs complaining at the amount of smoke I'd inhaled or my heart shutting down, I couldn't tell.

I tried to lift my heavy eyelids to see where I was, but even the smallest amount of energy seemed impossible. My body was working overtime to heal my extensive injuries from the fire. I wondered how Scott was faring.

 _Scott._

Forcing my eyes opened, I looked around for my friend. I was met with semi-darkness.

I lay on my back, my arms at my sides. I lifted my hands up to inspect them. They were grimy and cold. I was on a dirt floor. The skin was already shedding its angry red tint for my usual pale complexion. Nephilim blood worked fast.

"Sco-" I broke out into a hoarse cough.

My brain stumbled through a deep fog and my limbs moved through Jell-O but I needed to figure out what had gone wrong. Figuring out the events leading up to the present wasn't my only concern however. There was someone powerful lingering on the fringes of my mind.

 _Patch?_ I tried to mind speak, hoping he was here with me.

No answer.

I forced myself to my feet. A wave of nausea hit me and I toppled forward until my hands hit the coarse wood of the walls. As I leaned against the partition I scanned the room.

It was more of a shack, a bit bigger than my bathroom. The ceilings were high and there was only one door. I walked over to it, expecting to find some resistance but it just gave into my force.

The crisp October chill hit me. I felt my mind clear slightly. Then it all came rushing back.

Patch. He was gone, chained in hell.

I'd failed him.

I lost him.

He was never again going to kiss me or hold me or whisper "angel" in my ear.

A choking sob escaped me and I fell to my knees. What was the point of anything? He was my entire reason for my existing and because of me he was gone for all of eternity.

In a bitter twist of fate, I'd gained immortality and an "in" to his world just to have him wrenched away from me.

"Nora?" A strained voice came from behind me.

Scott. There was someone left who might still need me. And not just him. Vee and my mom too. If I concentrated on losing Patch I didn't think I could do it – anything. But thinking about what I had left gave me a glimmer of hope.

"Scott?" I rounded the corner of the building. A body lay crumpled on the ground.

"Oh my gosh Scott!" I crouched beside him.

Scott's body wasn't just burned. It seemed as though he'd been beaten with some kind of whip. He clutched his side, groaning. I lifted his shirt gingerly. There were lash marks criss-crossing the skin there. They glowed an unnatural blue.

 _Nora – can't – he's here – run!_ Broken mind-speak resounded in my head.

I turned around as a footstep sounded behind me. A large, black haired figure smiled maliciously down at me.

Baruch held a whip, clearly enchanted with devil craft.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? Little Nora finally on her own, no guardian angel to help her?"

Before I could respond or react he cracked the weapon against my thighs and I again fell to my knees. He lunged forward and trapped my wrists in one of his large hands above my head, pinning the rest of my body to the ground with his weight. He rested his legs on either sides of my hips.

I was trapped. My mind was still reeling, trying to get around how this could be.

Baruch was a fallen angel. I'd just watched every fallen angel feather burn in front of me.

He smirked as if he'd read my mind.

"Come on, you didn't think I'd actually let that idiot Dante get my feather?" He taunted.

"I was there when he intercepted that fumbling archangel. I had a feeling he was planning on double crossing us. If he was a rat enough to betray his own race, what was to stop him from doing the same to ours? I followed him and waited for the right moment to take mine back. When he handed them off to the weakling spawn of Hank Miller, I had my chance. It was effortless. She's so powerless I barely had to flinch before I'd taken my feather and wiped her brain."

I was stunned. If Baruch had been one step ahead of all of us this whole time, we'd underestimated him big time. But there were things that didn't add up.

"Why would you let your friends get chained in hell when you had a chance to save them?" A low laugh rumbled from his chest.

"Friends? Every fallen angel is a thief and a liar. There are no 'friends' among them. For example, I know what that Irish fellow did to your precious Patch."

The contempt in his voice at Patch's name made me wince.

I thought back to Rixon. He had been one of Patch's most trusted people, like a brother to him. Then Rixon had turned the knife.

"So because they're not the friendliest people in the world, you'd rather let them burn in hell and be alone for the rest of eternity?"

"I think you fail to see the incentive that I see. I get free choice to every unsworn and sworn Nephilim vassal on earth. Anyone I want, I can have. And now with devil craft, I'm not confined to Cheshvan."

At this he moved off of me, keeping my wrist locked in one hand. With the other he grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled to stand against him. I cried out in pain and Scott feebly called out my name.

There was something else wrong with him. It wasn't just the burns and the devil craft. His accelerated healing should've dealt with that by now but Scott still lay almost motionless on the ground. Probably the same reason I felt so sluggish and weak – Baruch must've found some kind of drug that incapacitated us.

The fallen angel moved his lips so that they hovered above the sensitive skin on my neck.

"I want you Nora. This time you're going to swear fealty. No one is here to save you. But first, I'm going to have some fun with you while you're still in charge of your body. That'll send a message to the Nephilim, their leader submitting everything and swearing her oath of fealty to the now most powerful fallen angel on the Earth."

 _No, no, no!_ I repeated it endlessly in my head.

I wasn't going to swear fealty to him. I'd mind tricked him once before and I'd do it again.

I began to try to slice through his mental web and make him see what I wanted him to see. All it earned me was a vicious openhanded blow against my cheek which left me reeling and seeing spots.

"Get out of my head your little bitch!" He let me fall onto my hands and knees. I tried to crawl away but he grabbed my hair again and pulled me to my knees.

"Not so fast, my pet. Where do you think you're going?" His icy fingers gripped my chin and pulled my head to face him.

"Hank was smart to turn such a gorgeous, fiery creature into an immortal." I couldn't move in his hold.

 _Nora, you have to fight him._

I stopped my restrained struggling. That voice shook me to my core. I must've been hallucinating.

 _Patch?_

In the beat of silence that followed I chastised myself for my insanity. I was in a life or death situation and I was busy fantasizing about my boyfriend.

 _Yes, Angel._

A shuddery sigh made me realize my cheeks were wet with tears. His voice sounded strained but solid – real. _But how –_ Patch cut me off quickly.

 _No time to explain. Get in his head. Scott is dying. You have to save yourself._

Baruch now had my hands wrenched behind my back and was roughly tying them with some kind of thin wire. With every movement of my hands they dug deeper into the skin on my wrist and I felt a fire down to the bone which left me breathless.

"Can't have you try to run away again, can we pet?"

 _Patch I'm scared, I need help, please help me!_

There was no response. I don't know how I knew but however I was able to communicate with him was cut off. I felt so much pain and my mind was tired and I hoped that it would just end soon.

 _Nora, please. Try!_ A different voice.

I look over to Scott's lifeless body and a wave of guilt hit me so hard, I'm left nauseous. He had always been there for me. He had sacrificed so much and was dying because I wasn't strong enough. And now, I was giving up. I was abandoning him. I turn my head away.

A stray curl moved in front of my eyes. In the moonlight it looked brown. That's what I'd always wanted. I'd always gone searching for something that I couldn't have. I'd never been satisfied with who I was.

But even if it didn't look like it now, my hair was red. And maybe I wasn't a clumsy, quiet, side quick who couldn't start a conversation without a boy without tripping on every word. Maybe I was a superhuman who was leading one of the most powerful armies on earth. But that wasn't going to help me now.

I might have been about to die because Baruch had gotten the better of my Nephilim body, but I was going to die as a clever, strong-willed redhead who loved her friends and family more than anything else. They never doubted me. Now I couldn't doubt myself. Baruch had disappeared into the shack for a few moments. He thought he knew who he was messing with? Think again punk.

I propped myself up onto my knees, wincing slightly at the wire's burn.

Baruch thought he was going to make a sport of me but I was going to prove him wrong if it killed me. After all, at this point, I had little to lose. The fallen angel exited the shack and looked momentarily confused to find me exactly where he'd left me, looking up at him.

"So you're now the most powerful fallen angel on the planet?" I asked in a tentative voice. His chest rose slightly at the question.

"The most powerful." I let a small smirk creep onto my face.

"Then I'll make you a deal. I'll swear fealty, I'll let you have my body however you want it and I'll be your eternal servant without question… if you help me wipe out the Nephilim."

It was obvious this wasn't where he expected the conversation to go.

"You'd expect me to fall for another trap? You're no better than that double-crossing snake Dante."

At this I brought my legs out from underneath me and drew myself up to my full height in front of him. I headily took in his iron-set face.

"I can offer you so much more than Dante ever could." I assured him breathily.

I could feel his hesitation but his guard was falling. I let myself into his mind little by little – whispering reassurances.

 _She wants you, let her in, she can give you everything, you need her._

Without warning, Baruch gripped my shoulders and pushed me back against the wall of the shack and his hand then went possessively to my face. His mouth came down onto mine and I fought off every urge to scream and gag at his touch and kissed back the best I could. I kept bombarding him with images and fragments to fuel his desire and keep him distracted. As he placed vicious kisses down my neck, I faked my whimpers of submission.

"Baruch," I whispered breathlessly. "Please, I need to touch you."

I sent him an image of my hands running over his chest and back. He roughly began to untie the wire without losing hold on my neck. I felt the weight fall to the ground.

I didn't miss a beat and bring my hands over his exposed skin and continued to grope mindlessly. I pulled us down onto our knees, keeping the wire within reach.

As Baruch moves his attention back to my lips I flailed my hand around the ground, searching for the wire. It burned in my grip but I ignore the pain and moved quickly to extend it to its full length.

I brought my arms around his back as if to hug him, and gripped the wire in both hands behind his back. He paused and I knew he suspected me. I pulled my hands close to me, digging the wire into his back, across his wing scars. A strangled groan escaped him and I tied it hurriedly in a knot resting just under his chest.

Baruch was not incapacitated but temporarily stunned. I got to my feet and looked down at him. A bit of black sticking up out of his pants caught my attention. His feather. I didn't hesitate to grab it and stumbled over to where Scott lay.

"Scott, Scott please get up. I have to burn it Scott. Please tell me that you have something, a lighter, matches, anything!"

He moved almost imperceptibly.

"Pocket." He wheezed.

I frantically stuck my hand into his large pockets and groped inside. My fingers brushed against cold metal. I gripped the lighter and staggered backwards. My hands shook uncontrollably. I painfully grasped the feather in one hand and the lighter in the other.

Baruch worked to untie the knot and my breath came in rapid puffs.

"Come here you little bitch!"

As he ripped the wire, I tried to start the fire with my thumb. He pieced my plan together in milliseconds and stepped towards me.

I didn't hesitate to bring the small flame to the tip of the feather and watched it turn shades of blue and green in slow motion.

Baruch's features twist into grotesque pain and I squeezed my eyes shut and dropped both the burning feather and the lighter on the ground. A whoosh of fire swelled in my ears and then there was no sound.

I opened my eyes and looked up. Baruch and his feather were gone.

I was safe and it was over. Patch was alive and I was going to be ok. I chanted over and over in my head.

First I had to help my friend. As I knelt beside Scott, I noticed my hands had stopped shaking.

One way or another, I was going to be ok. As long as I was living, I wouldn't stop looking for Patch. But I knew now that I could finally stop looking for me.


End file.
